Perhaps the following
comments on some recent books might be of interest to our bunch.

I finally finished Tony Judt's large volume Postwar: Europe since 1945.
It is an excellent book with a lot of information and insights into the
evolution of this sub-continent. Judt has been in the media lately as a
commentator on the over-hyped Annapolis Conference on the Mid-East.

His book ends with an epilogue taking the form of a broad condemnation of
the prevalent anti-Semitism of pre-war Europe. He criticizes just about
every nation, France and the Netherlands especially, and of course, Germany
and Austria. I think the comments are fair; I have a volume called
Verdict on Vichy by Michael Curtis which documents the eagerness of
French society to turn on the Jews. This book is not a good read as it is
quite repetitious, although well researched.

I think Judt should have reflected on the treatment being dished out to the
Palestinians by the state of Israel and tried to resolve the issue of human
behavior when faced with a minority in their midst that is not accepted by
the mass of the citizenry. Their is not much disparity between the European
and Israeli abuses.

A very well written book is that by Mearsheimer and Walt- The Israel
Lobby and US Foreign Policy. They have been heavily criticized, as one
would expect so this effort on their part took some courage. The "Lobby" has
usually sent out a guy named Abraham Fox from the Anti-Defamation League
to counter the authors, but he is not up to the task. On the
interviews I saw on PBS and heard on CBC Radio Mearsheimer was able to
prevail quite handily. I have also read a long critique on the web and this
really avoided speaking to the main points raised in the book.

What is rather disturbing is the ability of the "Lobby" to terminate the
political career of any Congressman who even mildly suggests that
Palestinians deserve better treatment than is being dished out by the State.
Jimmy Carter is quoted- "It's almost politically suicidal ... for a member
of the Congress who wants to seek reelection to take any stand that might be
interpreted as anti-policy of the conservative Israeli government." They
show many examples. Senator Lieberman running with financial support from
AIPAC as an independent defeats Ned Lamont running as a Democrat. The
defeats of Senator Lincoln Chafee, Representative Pete McCloskey, Senators
J. William Fulbright and Roger Jepson, Senator Adlai Stevenson when he ran
for governor of Illinois, and Senator Charles Percy were engineered by the
"Lobby" in retribution for not supporting Israel 100%. He mentions the
revision in Hillary's policy towards a Palestinian state which she advocated
in 1998 but is now silent on.

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist, has recently written a
paper entitled Reckoning: The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush which
is an overview of the present- day US economy. Stiglitz is a known
anti-globalization warrior but this paper deals largely with the domestic US
situation. It was published in Vanity Fair but can also be seen on
the Common Dreams web site at
http://commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/24/5413/print/